I often feel that the Full Shred is the unsung hero in the Seymour Duncan line-up. Seldom
mentioned, often overlooked. I’m guilty of this myself, having used practically every moderate-to-
high output pickup from the brand, but never considering this one as an option.

The SH-10 is a unique humbucker for sure. For a start, it’s name is perhaps a touch misleading. If
you’re expecting a hot, screamy, explosive and harmonically rich pickup, you’re likely to be
disappointed. Instead you’ll find it to be a refined, moderate, neutral and balanced humbucker,
capable of much more than just shred.

It’s also incredibly tight. Not tight in a compressed way, but in the sense that it has little-to-no low
end. It’s very rolled-off, but it’s neutral/flat response prevents it from becoming thin. This is where
the Full Shred truly excels, as it allows you to put your guitar through an ungodly amount of
distortion without the tone becoming hairy, woolly, and flubby.

It’s here that the pickup’s name starts to make sense again. The clarity of your tone simply won’t get
buried under heavy processing, be it effects or distortion, making it the perfect lead player’s pickup. The moderate output makes it a very expressive humbucker too, allowing you to pull back or dig in with your pick for a really dynamic playing experience.

To demo this pickup, I chose to write a track which wasn’t too heavy, aggressive, or complicated, to showcase its balanced tone. However, I do highly recommend the SH-10 for low tuned situations, where big strings and even bigger frequencies are fighting you every step of the way for a clear tone under heavy distortion.

Immortalised by Meshuggah, the Lundgren M-series has been synonymous with heavy low-tuned music since its inception. Originally only available as a 7 string pickup (M7) it soon became available in a 6 string option due to its spreading popularity.

Being of clear sound and tight bass it’s often favoured for very low tunings, and has a very hi-fi quality to it that retains note definition even under a great deal of distortion. Because of the enormous output, it gives amps a huge kick in the front end reminiscent of active pickups, but without the infamous sterility or lack of dynamics associated with actives.

Not into low tunings? The Lundgren M6 is a fantastic thrash/death pickup, as (hopefully) demonstrated in the video (the guitar was in D standard). Unlike other pickups that boast an exaggerated top end, the M6 doesn’t get shrill or thin, and still retains a lot of body and chunk even up in E standard.

I recently got a chance to check out some Entwistle HDN pickups. I was curious due to only ever having used pickups which utilise alnico and ceramic magnets. These pickups use Neodymium magnets, which are very powerful, and create a hot and focused sound.

“HDN” stands for High Definition Neodymium, and they certainly live up to their name with a focus that’s rarely achieved by passive pickups. They are incredibly tight, and react well to harmonics. The guitar used in this video was tuned down to C# but it still delivers plenty of mids and cut.

The only downside I can see is their tightness might be slightly overboard in some guitars, resulting in an unpleasant thinness. This can be heard particularly clearly in the ‘Clean’ section of the video demo.

Another potential downside (but only time will tell) is that, due to their cheap manufacture (and subsequent cheap RRP, these were £19 each!) they might not stand the test of time on the live circuit quite as well as their more expensive competitors.

Evergrey are a band that always stands out to me where production is concerned, as they never seem to adhere to any current convention, whilst making a truly unique but cohesive output that fits their music perfectly.

Usually known for guitar tones that steer towards the unusual, I initially had a mild panic attack when Evergrey kept appearing for the next suggestion for a Tone-Clone segment. But the more I pondered it and delved through their back catalogue, the more I remembered just how much I love this band, the riffs, the tones, and how much it would be equally as much fun as it would be challenging.

The problem is, Evergrey are one of those bands that aren’t particularly ‘public’ about their methods or, more importantly, their equipment! Even in this day and age of the internet and nothing really being as ‘underground’ as it used to be, it’s still very difficult to find info on what was used for certain albums. And as we all know, what a band uses on the road doesn’t necessarily have a single thing in common to what was used on record.

So, trusty ol’ ears to the rescue.

More often than not, this is the best course of action for mimicking a tone/mix anyway. Not knowing exactly what was used leaves out all preconceptions and lets you hear things a bit more subjectively and contextually.

The tone
There’s undeniably something very Mesa/Boogie-ish about their earlier tones. A brief Googling reveals much speculation as to whether the Recreation Day tone in particular was either Triaxis (which they have been known to use live during this period and on earlier albums) or Peavey 5150. My gut (and ears, of course) is telling me it’s not a 5150. I have heard a few 5150 tones that completely threw me, and made me scratch my head a bit, but even so I’d be incredibly surprised if this was indeed a Peavey.

ONTO THE PLUG-INS…

AmpKnowing what sort of tones can be achieved with LePou’s LeCto, it was a bit of a no-brainer to reach for that. It’s, in a way, in between the two possible bits of gear used anyway. It can do both Triaxis and 5150-ish, and it really didn’t take long to know that this was the sim to use.

Almost immediately after pulling up any old impulse I could hear that top end ‘grain’ that the album has. It’s what I would call ‘woolly’, and that’s a very Mesa/Boogie trait, particularly with the Triaxis preamp and of course the Rectifier series.

The Evergrey tone in question has a lot of tight, percussive attack (during that down-picked ‘chugging’ section it’s so damn tasty, and almost has a… dare I say it… ‘djenty’ quality), so I can only assume they are using some sort of Tubescreamer variant in front. As always, I went for the trusty TSE 808 which can be downloaded here – http://www.tseaudio.com/software.html

Cab ImpulsesThis was a tough one. Anybody who does in fact know anything about Evergrey and their choice of guitar rigs in the studio knows that they are incredibly secretive about the cab/speaker choice! You can’t find that information anywhere, and you never actually see any footage/pictures of what is used. Again, this only induces speculation, but going by my ears I’m putting my money on a V30’s sound, possibly Mesa but definitely not the Standard OS deep/grainy/open sound we’re accustomed to on most modern metal productions. It’s more traditional, smaller, tighter, boxier. I would assume either a 1960AV, Mesa Traditional, or a custom made 4×12 of some description.

After much deliberation and experimentation I settled on two impulses found in a pack which can be downloaded from here: http://www.lechatelet.de/IR/files/ (Rectifier_Setup_da_impact.zip)

I used both impulses in that pack in equal blend. They seemed to capture the general EQ of the tone, and helped bring home some of that grit in the top end.

There was something missing, however, a little depth and air. I added a third impulse from the trusty GuitarHack pack (if you are into home recording and using amp sims/impulses and don’t have this impulse pack yet, you need to go outside and have a word with yourself – http://relivethefuture.com/music/patches/GuitarHacksImpulses.rar). After trying a few I settled on a 45 angle (off axis) impulse that did just the trick. It’s not absolutely essential but I felt that it added a touch of depth that was missing.

IMPORTANT: You will, however, have to play with the delay settings as there is a phase issue between this GuitarHack impulse and the other two aforementioned impulses. On the LeCab2 plug-in I had the delay for this impulse set at 0.3ms, as you can see from the image below.

Processing
Barely any. I didn’t even use any multiband compression, which is a rarity for me. This was a simple hi-pass/lo-pass job, at 100hz and 8k respectively. I found that, with the impulses chosen to get the correct EQ curve, any compression and other processes would be detrimental to the bulbous and airy tone of the original.